Finished! Thing 23.

I finally trudged across the finish line today.
What have I learned? More than I expected. At least three of the 23 applications have become part of my standard repertoire. Flickr. com, podcasts and YouTube are all standard operating procedures for me now, and I expect that will continue. Other applications seem less useful to me, but at least I now know what RSS feeds, social networking sites and social bookmarking entail.
Biggest surprise of the process? Finding the hitherto unknown branch of the family on Facebook(if indeed the Hansburgs of Arkansas are an African-American twig on the otherwise Jewish family tree) . In fact, that was almost worth the entire 23 things altogether. It has such a delicious 21st century aspect to it. I've always suspected that one of my sons will marry a girl from another race. Time for some hybrid vigor in the family bloodlines, I thought. But who knew that we were already more multicultural than we had imagined!! It's a good time to elect a half-Kansan, half-African president. He's our kind of people.

Thing 22

October 27, 2008
I really enjoy DOING my job, but I'm not fond of blogging about it--still less, reading other people's blogs on the topic.
Nothing personal, librarians, I'm just not interested in anyone's blog for the most part. Exhibitionism combined with diary keeping--combining the worst features of both pursuits, it seems to me. If that sounds overly harsh, well, perhaps it's because I'm such a long-standing diarist myself. Maybe I'm just reacting badly to technological innovation, but I suspect it runs deeper. I REALLY like (no, depend on) the complete privacy and freedom of self-expression to be found in my personal [non-digital] journal. I just can't get my mind around sharing it with the world. Ever elitist, I like to think of "my reader" (aka chere lectrice--assume the accent grave) as the One and Only who waits for me across time and space. Is she my unborn granddaughter? Will I ever meet her?
Speculations that run far afield of today's topic.

Thing 21

Well, I tried Gather. A website for MPR members is the way they bill themselves. Adults! Great! The trouble is that I already have a real-world (as opposed to a virtual) social network. I'm maxed out. I don't really want any more online friends. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the people I know in real life.
For people my age, the Internet is a great social tool for strengthening and maintaining the ties we formed at an earlier stage in life. When I think of increasing the volume of those ties (more emails, more "responding," more kids' names to remember, anniversaries to congratulate) I feel mostly fatigued.
Well on my way to achieving the curmudgeon status I've always aspired to, I guess.

Tning 20B

One week on Facebook and I've already become a snob about MySpace.com. Inferior in all respects, it seems to me. I gave it a fair shot. Tried my long-lost relative search, tried to find a group I wanted to join. (No luck in that respect, particularly. What do I have in common with a member who regards the keywords "jane austen" as a tag for an indie rock band?)
Must be the ivy tower connection. (Back in the dim, dark past, "facebook" was the name for the freshman picture galleries that male undergrads used to pore over, checking out the incoming 'talent' from a purely carnal viewpoint.)

Thing 20 Part II

October 23, 2008

To my amazement, when I checked my facebook account a week later (as per instructions), I found that two people had asked to be my friends (or whatever the formula is). Who knew that middle-aged people use Facebook?

Even more interesting was that I found a hitherto completely unknown family that bears my (most unusual) Russian-Jewish maiden name. The really interesting part is that the family is African-American and they live in Arkansas! Will wonders never cease? Perhaps there's more to modern technology than I had imagined.

Thing 20 Facebook

Well, now I'm a Facebook member. To my delight, I found one of my younger acquaintances online. The redoubtable Andy Granger has a complete, fully decorated facebook page (if that's what it's called.) He had posted his latest news --dental surgery a few hours ago. I hope I shocked him by turning up unexpectedly in a stronghold of youth like Facebook.

Thing 19 Podcasts

I've finally come into my own with these last two things. Finally, a Thing that I know fairly well.! Thanks to my iPod and my indefatigable exercise walking regime, I am an enthusiastic (and omniverous) consumer of podcasts from Public Radio. I've been known to turn off the radio during favored broadcasts like "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and "This American Life" so as not spoil them for later podcast enjoyment during my daily walk.
While I generally download my podcasts automatically (and, for free) from the iTunes website, I didn't realize that there were other sites like podcast.com and podcast.net. I'd like to compare offerings between the various sites, but I'll have to do it on my home computer, since the library's machines don't have iTunes software loaded.

Thing 18 You Tube

At last, something I know about and use. However, I've never posted a video clip to my blog (or to anything else, for that matter).

The YouTube gem I chose is from Jacqus Tati's superlative 1949 film, Jour de Fete, but I selected it for strictly serendipitous reasons. While I was working on Thing 18, a patron walked up and asked for Jacques Tati films. I recognized a fellow enthusiast and began describing Jour de Fete, which I last saw projected against a sheet in a student film venue in Den Haag 30 years ago while I was living in the Netherlands. He'd never heard of it, and we could find no evidence that it had ever been released in an American format DVD. Well, what was YouTube meant for it if not moments like this?

Sure enough, YouTube had three separate clips from the film--although not, alas, the most wonderful scene of all. That would be the "training film" shown to the Tati and his fellow postmen, in order to teach them how to deliver the mail "a l'americaine" using the "methode atomique." Giant mushroom clouds punctuate the latest in postal technology. It sounds horrible from a 21st anti-nuclear p.o.v, but in terms of the film, it was gentle French raillerie at the expense of the American efficiency. The print I saw contained was black & white, but someone had carefully hand colored all the French tricolor flags (the "jour de fete" in question is Bastille Day, after). Purely lovely.

Thing 17 Page Composer

I quite liked the Ebsco productivity tools, or at least I liked the theory of them. In reality, I had some troubles setting up a website with the photos (of poet Thomas Clare) that I had grabbed from the Internet. I'd need to become much more familiar with the available options before I could start rolling it out with confidence for patrons.

Thing 16

This is one I like, particularly the Research Project Calculator, which is an online timeline for high school students contemplating the daunting experience of doing a term paper. I think we should have it linked to our homepage, so that I won't have to rely on my memory alone when I recommend it to patrons.

Thing 15--Online Games

August 29, 2008



Who needs a second life? I have enough trouble keeping track of the first one. Seriously, who--once safely past the solipsistic shores of adolescence---would be interested in creating an online fantasy life? The mind reels at the thought of aging 20-something troglodytes crouching their parents' basements while inhabiting some virtual fantasy life of unlimited power and sexual adventure. My God. This is the "community" with whom one is supposed to interact in the opportunities offered by Thing 15.

Still, learning about the popularity of such activities is endlessly amazing. I am struck by the sheer mechanical, quantifiable aspect of matters that in real life are soft-focus and indeterminant. On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog, but in fact you can calibrate with mathematical certainty the exact degree of your non-canine life.

I've been reading Benjamin Nugent's American Nerd: the Story of My People, a weirdly fascinating account of the kind of people who spend inordinate amounts of time on game sites like Second Life. The quantifiable aspect of online human relations (Charisma Level 14; Wizardly Powers Level 6 etc. etc.) is exactly what appeals to them about the virtual social world. Not that "anything can happen in your second life" but that--unlike the life they were born into--their second life promises control and predictability in that most unpredictable of arenas--human relationships.

Thing 14

Thing 14

The Library Thing is not my thing. Why is that? Because I have enough book-talk in my real life already(I belong to 3 different book groups and I work in a library, for heaven's sake) . The idea of establishing a virtual reading life just exhausts me.
Still, it might be a good source for identifying "Other Books like [Author Name]" I wish there were a way to post appeals to collective memory, though. "Idenify this book" kind of stuff. I'd appreciate another resource for that.

Thing 13

The thirteenth thing is called "Online Productivity Tools"--although I must admit that I felt anything but productive as I sampled the various options that I could add to my igoogle page. Would my efficiency on the job really increase because I elect to have the joke of the day at my fingertips? A number of the add-ons seem designed only to increase the mental distance between my wandering attention and whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing.

On the other hand, I did doll up my igoogle page with local weather alerts (a no-brainer since the weather radio keeps going off on this day of unsettled atmospherics--from where I sit I can hear the alarm, but not the announcer's voice giving us the weather particulars), the New York Times leads and a few other relentlessly respectable links. I even added the "great art image of the day" for decoration. A Gaugain Tahitian this morning.

Then I stumbled over the 23 Thing pointer to a website called Zamzar.com According to the blurb,
This program will covert one file type to another. Especially handy in libraries that may not be able to open a student or patron file because it doesn’t have the right software.
Well, son of a gun, if we hadn't just had that situation in the library this morning. I wonder if this would have helped.

I still prefer my personal "starting place" homepage aldaily.com (Arts & Literature Daily from the Chronicle of Higher Education, it's something like the thinking person's Reader's Digest), not because it's useful--it isn't--but because it's really one of the most interesting ways I know to waste time online.

Thing 11 Reddit, Digg etc.

OK, I've reached my limit. Call me an elitist, call me a media snob, but I see absolutely no reason to get my news mediated by the inadequate attention spans of a bunch of witless, post-adolescent cyber-commentators. The so-called social media sites can carry on without me.

When I want to find out what's going on in the world, I want the New York Times straight up. Why on earth would I care to have my news "voted on" by a bunch of underemployed slackers who happen to have some time on their hands in cyberspace? Sorry, but whatever "community" they belong to, count me out.

Thing 10

Honor is served. I have added a comment to our Reference Wiki, thereby observing the letter (if not the spirit) of Thing #10.
My chief difficulty with Wikis is the usual authoritative/egalitarian dilemma. Do I really trust the collective wisdom of the group, unmediated by the editorial voice?

I wonder what the origins of the word "wiki" are, by the way. Oh well, speak but the word, and google gives us the answer. According to computerworld.com, the genesis of "wiki" is just about as banal as you might expect. Somebody vacationing in Hawaii hears "wiki, wiki" (Hawaiian for 'quick') and thinks, "Hey, that's a good name for the software."
The only software name I've ever approved of, really, was the email program Eudora--for obvious literary reasons. (Eudora Welty's short story "Why I Live at the P.O." was the inspiration.)
Oh well, off-topic as usual. I am NOT a 21st century person.

Breaking the digital barrier.

Why is it that some technological innovations seem utterly natural to me? Others, I examine with all the benighted curiosity of the chimp in the famous scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I adapted to email, instant messaging, conference messaging, mapquesting and google in all its various incarnations (movie finder, weather watcher, shopping agent, purchasing point etc. etc. in addition to regular find-anything) with ease and a sigh of satisfaction that my world now included these obviously useful features. I love the fact that I'm able to find long-lost anyone on the 'net and that I'm able to research the background of new acquaintances with just a few keystrokes. My politically prurient side adores the Huffington Post where I can snoop on the political contributions of my relatives. ("How dare my brother lavish thousands of dollars on the GOP? Our socialist mama must be turning in her grave.") My obsessive nature is deeply devoted to runstoppable.org, which allows me to log every foot I've ever jogged.

Text messaging, on the other hand, seems to belong to a world beyond my sluggish opposable thumbs, as does summoning directions to my cellphone via google or creating ingenious mashups of hitherto unrelated datasets. Why do these things? Why, for that matter, create those-- at best indiscreet---at worst, devastating--- little electronic temples to narcissism, the Facebook or MySpace page?

I'm sure part of it has to do with age and deteriorating eyesight. Can anyone with presbyopia fully master the possibilities offered by her cell phone? I can't even read the caller ID information when I'm driving. How am I supposed to summon movie reviews en route? (And, besides, my taste remains so resolutely oddball. The one movie I attempted to locate via cellphone was the well-reviewed Israeli production Jellyfish. With touching--if inaccurate--solicitude, 'call google' attempted to refer me to the nearest Biology Library.)

But it's not my failing eyes that present the greatest barriers. The true deal breaker is the inner restraint that used to go the name of ordinary discretion. It's reflexive in someone of my generation--unknown apparently in those who come after. I would rather undergo unspecified mental torture than reveal the cornucopia of personal details that seem to pass for expected content on blog after homepage after flckr account.

Text Message

I just sent my first. (Or, at least, I tried to). The recipient was my teenage son--the only person I could think of that knows the difference between a text message and a typewriter. It will probably come as a tremendous blow to him to realize that this teenage redoubt is now accessible by his mother!
I even looked up an online glossery of abbreviations, and composed the following message:

AYV MOS

This, to the unitiated, means: Are You Vertical? (a legitimate question given the fact that it is only 1;30 in the afternoon---the break of dawn, in other words, for any teenager in the opening days of summer vacation)
Mother Over Shoulder (the text msg. equivalent of telling him that Big Brother is watching.)

Thing 7

Anyway, at last a tool that I'm familiar with. Email and it's younger stepsister, IM. I thought I'd never prefer IM to picking up the phone, but in fact I switched over with frightening alacrity. Can it be that I'm not a people person after all?

Thing 5

I did not have More Fun with Flickr. Maybe it's because I'm such a non-visual person. I think in words--not images. So I'm completely nonplussed by the opportunity to do "creative things" with flickr images. I don't want to spell my name in pictures or find all the pictures in a particular shade of blue or any of the other proffered "10 Best" flickr applications. Plus, I'm sick of having to correct my typing each time I write f-l-i-c-k-e-r.

I'm sticking with my kid's prom photos, to be updated when my niece gets married next month.

Thing 4

I am now in proud possession of a flickr site, populated at this point exclusively by pictures of my 17-year-old son Teddy and his girlfriend, Erin, taken just as they were about to depart for the Junior Prom. Teddy and Erin are perfectly beautiful, although fiendishly red-eyed thanks to our camera technique. The pictures even feature cameo shots of me, my husband Paul and Erin's mother, hovering proudly on the edges of the action.
Oh, to be 17 again---but smarter this time!

Flickr

Flickr (is that how it's spelled? There is definitely a missing letter. What is the fashion for deliberate misspelling anyway? It's so much more time consuming to remember the wrong way than just to do it rght---joke.)
Anyway, Flickr has real potential. I plan to post Teddy's prom pictures for the world to enjoy.

Thing Number 3

Continuing at my own glacial pace, I have finally acquired an RSS feed site (is that the proper title?) and have stocked it with the minimum three required feeds--only one of which is new. As for the others--aldaily.com and NPR's Talk of the Nation---am I more likely to look at them now that there is an additional mediating layer of electronic 'stuff' between me and their content? I'm already overstimulated by the array of information inexorably bearing down on me.
What would my namesake, Henry James' inquiring journalist Henrietta, have made of all this? She thought of herself as a modernist but was much less successful at the enterprise than she supposed. (That's why I gave my blog her name.) Would she have enthusiastically embraced technology, but made a hash of it? Is this a fit topic for online speculation?
Well, on to the next technological summit to be scaled.

Thing #2

Thing #2

The Library 2.0 future makes me feel very, very tired.
I don't want to be an early-adopter, but I don't suppose I'm running much risk of that anyway.

Thing #1 on-a-stick

I am now in possession of a blog. Why does this development not fill me with more excitement and anticipation? Can it be that I can't think of anything to say? Perish the thought! I've been keeping diaries/journals/epistolary relationships since I was seven years old.

I AM, however, afflicted with stage fright of a sort. My antique sensibilities were developed over half a century ago, back at a time when public embarrassment and humiliation (as opposed to the dubious benefits of modern celebrity) were still a very real possibility. Obsolescent Twentieth Century model that I am, I can't seem to free myself from the limitations of an overactive sense of privacy.

Oh well, now that I'm breathing the free, anonymous blogger air, perhaps all this will change.